[1.0.2] Tri Element Trapper

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DisRuptive1 wrote:

Can I also get your thoughts on the following unique items? I'd like to upgrade my gear and don't want to upgrade it to what you have unless you consider what you're wearing to be the best.

Infernal Mantle

Gifts from Above

Voidbringer

Infernal Mantle - The fire specialty of it does lend well to Fire Trap, however I believe Carcass Jack offers quite a bit more benefits than the Mantle. The increased AoE size of Carcass does a whole lot for this build. Let's not forget that Carcass also has HP and Resist All, both stats very welcomed.

Gifts from Above - The abundance of crit is nice, however again it lacks HP and resists. Also, ignite damage kills most enemies, which would fail to trigger the increased Rarity on Crit.

Voidbringer - Very nice because of the massive amount of crit chance...however that is just about the only thing that is helpful for this build. Extra mana costs will eat into your survivability through Mind Over Matter, and again, lacking HP and Resists.

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Shoraki wrote:

Arkon, What do you think about using Shock Nova+Trap+Multi trap instead of lightning trap? Wouldn't there be a much higher chance of getting more shock stacks on a target and higher damage potential? Also, What about elemental weakness?

My Lightning Trap 4L is: Lit Trap - Ele Prolif - Reduced Duration - Multi Trap

Yours would be: Shock Nova - Trap - Multi Trap - Reduced Duration

You would lose both Ele Prolif and Lightning Pen.

Level 20 Lightning Trap: 27-514 dmg

Level 20 Shock Nova: 35-656 dmg (Also then multiplied by 34% more damage from Trap Support)

Now even though those numbers look as if Shock Nova is the clear winner, it would actually lose by a long shot. It's individual damage straight up against Lightning Trap would indeed be higher, however, contrary to what you said, it would be a SMALLER chance to get shock stacks. Also, let's not forget aobut Lightning Penetraion on Lightning Traps.

We've hopefully all seen how Lightning Trap works. Lightning Trap is an "all or nothing" type crit spell, meaning either all the projectiles of a single trap crit, or none of them. With Multi Traps, that gives 3 chances per toss for "All or Nothing". If one of those 3 traps crit, you'd be hard pressed to not touch 3 monsters in a cluster to cause triple shocks to EVERYTHING in the area because of Ele Prolif.

Now, if you removed Multi Trap from your Shock Nova, and put in Ele Prolif...you would have a lightning spell that would deal some serious legit damage (Lightning Trap is a poke, doesn't do great damage.) However, because Shock Nova is also an "All or Nothing" type of crit spell, you would have to rely on that one single trap to crit in order to get your triple stacks up through Proliferation.

Since both Shock Nova and Lightning Trap have 4% base crit, there is no crit advantage to adding shock stacks, the only advantage is the 30% chance on a quality Shock Nova. Now I'll show you an example of what I mean. Currently my Lightning Trap has a 22% crit chance...it would be exactly the same if that was Shock Nova.

At a 22% chance to crit, that means 78% of the time "Trap 1" won't crit. Out of that 78%, "Trap 2" has a 22% chance to crit, meaning roughly 39% of the time EITHER "Trap 1" or "Trap 2" will crit. Out of the remaining 61%, there's "Trap 3"'s chance to crit, bringing your total chance for one of the three traps to crit to 53%. So with my 22% chance to crit, and my Lightning Trap set-up, a little more than half the time I throw a Lightning Trap, everything will be shock stacked up.

Now when it comes to Shock Nova: Again, 22% chance to crit, leaving 78% non-crit. Counting the 30% Quality bonus means that your Shock Nova will shock 46% of the time. Yes, it's only a 7% difference, and your Shock Nova would do quite a bit more damage. However, if you're familiar with how both Lightning Trap and Shock Nova look when cast, you would realize that it would be tougher to rely on Shock Nova hitting 3 targets to get triple shocks compared to Lightning Trap.

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Now, as for the raw damage of each trap. Assuming we use Lightning Trap how I have it set up, and Shock Nova 4L as (Nova-Prolif-Reduced Duration-Trap).

Lightning Trap average damage: 270
Shock Nova average damage: 345

Lightning Trap with Multi Trap -40% damage: 108
Shock Nova with Trap +34% damage: 462

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After showing you both of those, keep a few things in mind. First, the idea of the lightning damage, either shock nova or lightning trap is to get THREE shock stacks set up for your huge damage Fire Trap. Using Multi Trap over Ele Prolif on your Shock Nova would defeat the purpose of getting triple stacks because all 3 traps would have to crit and all 3 traps would have to hit every monster in order to cause triple stacks, that's obviously out of the question. So going with my example of a single Shock Nova with Ele Prolif. Lightning Trap still has an advantage on applying shock stacks while Shock Nova has a raw damage advantage.

All that said and done, that's only raw numbers, not actual gameplay. I think both you and I would agree it's a LOT eaiser to hit multiple mobs, even multiple times with triple lightning trap than it would be to hit things with Shock Nova, causing the sway in power to favor Lightning Trap even more.

Lastly, Lightning Trap has a 2 second refresh. The Trap support causes that spell to have a 4 sec refresh. When fighting white and blue monsters, this doesn't factor in at all. However, for some more "beefy" rares, and unique bosses, there will be times your 4sec CD of Ice Nova runs out and you're relying on a Lit>Fire>Lit>Fire trap order until Ice Nova refreshes. If you were to use Shock Nova, there will be times that your Lit and Cold traps are both empty.

They both seem pretty viable. I think it's a matter of using a 5L-6L for Shock Nova or Fire Trap. With a 5L-6L I think that the average burst potential would be higher with Shock Nova.

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Shoraki wrote:

They both seem pretty viable. I think it's a matter of using a 5L-6L for Shock Nova or Fire Trap. With a 5L-6L I think that the average burst potential would be higher with Shock Nova.

I like the idea a lot, don't get me wrong. Since I read your post I've been trying to think of ways to make it work.

The best that I've come up with is moving the 4L for Ice Nova to gloves and putting Deerstalker boots back into play.

Your boots would be: Deerstalker Trap-Shock Nova-Ele Prolif-Reduced Duration-Multi Trap

It would not only give your lightning damage a tiny bit more "umph" as Shock Nova has a higher base damage than Lightning Trap plus the 25% more damage level 11 Trap causes, but your chance to apply shock stacks with a Multi Trap'd Shock Nova would be somewhere around 88%.

The only issue I still see is that the "Trap" support is a 4 sec refresh while Lightning Trap is a 2 sec refresh, and there will be times that comes into play. And of course it comes at the price of HP and Resists.

As my above post showed, a Multi Trap - Lightning Trap avg damage is 108. If you were to use Deerstalkers as just explained, Shock Nova's average damage would be 293. It wouldn't happen all that often, but triple Shock Novas would have certain areas getting hit twice, which would be tremendous, however it is still VERY easy to hit a single mob 2-3 times with a Lightning Trap.

In the end, we're still putzing around with minimal damage compared to Fire Trap. A Conc Effect/Multi Trap in a Fire Trap causes it's average damage to be roughly 613.

The comparison would be:

Shock Nova: More Damage + Higher Chance to Shock

Lightning Trap: More HP + More Resists + More IIR + Faster Trap Refresh for longer fights

u use ice nova or cold snap ?

@Grizzlykreis
He uses ice nova. He switched to it from cold snap you can read why on front page (as well as some other recent pages like around pg 15 or so).


@arkon9944
Thanks for the helpful reply to my last post! Im level 55 now and still having a lot of fun.

Something I was thinking about since you updated was since you dropped a passive point do you think it would be worth it to get an endurance charge by helping Oak?

is there any good unique weapon for this build? or is it best to go with a rare dagger with spelldmg+spellcrit?

and Lightning trap 4l is LT+ElePro+MultiTrap+RedDur? since you are talking about light pen 2 posts above im confused :D

This is what arkon had to say earlier in the thread (pg 16) about unique items.

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arkon9944 wrote:

Carcass Jack and Sunblast are 100% absolutely never going to change, however, I would change out a Divinarius should I ever be able to find something like this:

Dagger (Platinum Kris base): Spell Damage, +base Mana, Spell Dmg/base Mana combo /// Spell Crit, Mana Regen, Global Crit Multiplier

As to your question about light pen I'm not sure.

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hhjobbo wrote:

is there any good unique weapon for this build? or is it best to go with a rare dagger with spelldmg+spellcrit?

and Lightning trap 4l is LT+ElePro+MultiTrap+RedDur? since you are talking about light pen 2 posts above im confused :D

I fixed the comment about Lightning Pen. I was awake for roughly 30 hours cause of how my shifts at work pretty much went back to back.

After reading the comment about Shock Nova, it really got me curious so I threw together some gear, bought a high quality Shock Nova, and wow. I like it a lot. Gonna give it another day or two to tinker with some stuff before I update the guide, once again.